At a global level the research sees Singapore holding the number one spot, with Australia coming in 12th and New Zealand 14th – both ahead of the United States.

Across APAC, Australia and New Zealand follow world-leader Singapore in 2nd and 3rd place respectively.

The resulting The Global Cloud Ecosystem Index reflects how leading nations have marshalled cloud infrastructure, tools, and applications to accelerate and transform economic productivity.

The report acknowledges world leader Singapore’s “relentless cloud-first strategy that has benefited from a central government commitment and an ability to cultivate collaboration and cooperation across a nationwide digital transformation project.”

Meanwhile Australia and New Zealand are described as “digitally-centric economies” referencing the Infosys Cloud Radar 2021 report, which noted cloud adoption is rising the fastest in these countries.

Australia sits in line with its overall global ranking when it comes to Infrastructure, Ecosystem Adoption, and Security and Assurance - however Australia’s talent and human affinity ranking is relatively low in comparison. This aspect measures how well-prepared a population is to contribute to a cloud-based digital economy – looking at everything from productivity, to engineering and maths skills, as well as overall digital literacy.

Report authors made note of Australia’s central bank having joined counterparts from Malaysia, Singapore, and South Africa in “Project Dunbar”, a trial of a shared Central Bank Digital Currency platform designed to reduce cross-border transaction costs by allowing commercial banks to pay each other directly in another country’s virtual currency.

New Zealand holds up on infrastructure and talent but has work to do on both security and assurance and ecosystem adoption the rankings revealed.

Security and Assurance measures the maturity of a nation’s regulatory environment and how it enables trust in digital resources. Ecosystem Adoption measures everything from digital services adoption to the availability of digital government services, innovation, SaaS revenues, and even the price of broadband relative to GDP.

Report authors made note of New Zealand's digital government efforts, which include promoting the use of domestically developed cloud services. They cited the Department of Internal Affairs having entered into a three-year cloud framework agreement with local provider Catalyst Cloud for government agencies looking to use IaaS, PaaS, and other public cloud services.

Australia:

“The efforts of the Digital Transformation Agency, to cement Australia as a leading digital economy by 2025, are paying off. Local infrastructure is in a good spot and sits within a regulatory framework that builds trust. This is working to build engagement given Australian participation in cloud-based digital economies is globally competitive.

A shortage of talent and lack of digital skills persists but is hearteningly present on the political agenda.. The Federal Budget earmarked $43.8m to back cyber security skills and $24.7m for an AI graduates’ program, among a raft of initiatives that total over $100m in investment into digital skills.

At Infosys we see collaboration between government, academia and the private sector as being crucial to addressing the skills gap. In Australia & New Zealand we run our internship program InStep in collaboration with universities that include University of Auckland, UNSW, The University of Sydney, UTS, ANU, Monash University and The University of Melbourne. We are also part of the Victorian Government’s Digital Jobs program. also In addition we offer Springboard locally, our digital learning ecosystem, designed to help enable pathways to learn and education among under-represented communities.”

New Zealand:

“The New Zealand government recently unveiled a million-dollar ‘NZ Tech Story’ campaign designed to attract overseas investors, workers and customers to its thriving digital economy – credentials that are backed up by its overall ranking, and notable performance from an infrastructure and talent perspective.

Meanwhile the government is in consultation with industry on a draft plan to further develop the local digital technologies sector. This will build on its current digital work program that focus on connectivity, safety and security, creating a digital government and supporting trust in data, as well as improving inclusion and adoption of digital technologies. Work in this area should help bolster the frameworks and security required to maintain and grow New Zealand’s world-class digital credentials.”

An interactive page that visualises the research results can be accessed here, and the full report can be accessed here.